Hydrogen is used in the manufacture of many products including edible fats and oils, metals, semiconductors and microelectronics. Hydrogen is also an important fuel source for various energy conversion devices. For example, many types of fuel cells use purified hydrogen and an oxidant to produce electrical energy.
Various processes and equipment are used to produce hydrogen that is consumed by fuel cells. One such piece of equipment is a steam reformer, which reacts water and a hydrocarbonaceous material, such as an alcohol feed in the presence of a steam reforming catalyst to produce a reformate comprised predominantly of hydrogen.
Although catalysts in powder form can be used in chemical process units, catalyst particles are typically formed into shapes such as spheres, pellets and rods. While these shapes are easier to handle, the result in usually a decrease in catalyst activity and/or selectivity.
With diminishing liquid fossil fuel reserves, and the world dependent on such fuels for energy with existing fuel consumption equipment design, infrastructure, and logistics designed for such liquid fuels, it has become increasingly desirable to convert vast reserves of natural gas to liquid fuels. Natural gas is comprised mainly of methane, but it is under-utilized due to transportation costs and economic reasons. For example, approximately 50% of the known natural gas deposits in the world (worth trillions of dollars) are in abandoned fields. These fields have significant natural gas deposits, but are located in remote areas, and the amount of reserves does not justify the costs of constructing a transmission pipeline.
Another source of underutilized natural gas is at oil wells, where natural gas is a component of the recovered hydrocarbons. In subterranean oil reserves, the top layer is gas, and though the oil well is constructed to tap into the liquid oil, much of the gas comes to the surface as what is termed associated gas. Typically, the associated gas is flared, except in instances where the oilfield is close to a major gas pipeline.
Yet another potential source of energy is the copious amount of biogas and landfill gas flared by landfill operators across the US and the world.
In its simplest form, syngas is composed of two diatomic molecules, CO and H2 that provide the building blocks upon which an entire field of fuel science and technology is based. Over the years, the gaseous mixture of CO and H2 has had many names depending on how it was formed; producer gas, town gas, blue water gas, synthesis gas, and syngas. In the 1800s coal gasification was used to provide much of the syngas used for lighting and heating. The beginning of the 20th century saw the dawn of fuels and chemicals synthesis from syngas. Most notably, a broad class of fuels termed gas-to-liquids (GTL) using variations of the Fischer Tropsch Synthesis process (FTS) have been commercialized. The lowest cost routes for syngas production are based on natural gas. The cheapest option is to use remote or stranded reserves.
While various catalytic reforming processes exist for producing hydrogen from hydrocarbonaceous feeds, such as alcohol feeds, and various Fischer-Tropsch processes exist for producing liquid synthetic fuels from syngas, there remains a need in the art for improvements in process technology, particularly with respect to catalyst utilization, decrease in catalyst turnover rate, and reaction selectivity.